Nintendo cuts Wii U sales projections

New system won't match the Wii's historic sales pace.

While the Wii U won't be an instant flop like the Virtual Boy, sales projections released by Nintendo today show it probably won't match the runaway sales success of the original Wii, either.

Nintendo sold 3.06 million Wii U units worldwide from its November launch through the end of 2012. That's nearly as much as the 3.19 million units of the original Wii Nintendo sold back in the 2006 holiday season.

But Nintendo doesn't think it can keep that momentum up. Back in October, the company said it expected to sell 5.5 million Wii U units through the end of March. That number has now been cut down to 4 million, meaning Nintendo expects to sell fewer than a million systems worldwide in the first three months of 2013.

It's natural to expect some sales drop-off as a new system transitions away from a holiday launch. Still, that's quite a dip in expectations, especially considering the original Wii kept up its brisk launch sales pace all the way through 2007. That system hit 5.84 million sales by March of 2007 and an astonishing 20.13 million by the end of the year. Nintendo seems to be conceding that it won't be able to match that record-setting pace again with its new system.

The launch of the Wii U has had a "negative impact on Nintendo's profits," the company said, and Nintendo now expects to end the fiscal year with its second straight loss in operating income, though changes in the exchange rate for the Japanese yen might help the company squeak by with an overall profit.

The Wii U's Software sales are looking a little better. Despite a disappointing launch line up, Nintendo sold 11 million Wii U games through December, including over 2 million sales each for New Super Mario Bros. U and NintendoLand. The roughly 3.8 games sold per system so far lines up nicely with the expectations Nintendo set in October, but the scaled back hardware sales projections means Nintendo has also lowered its total Wii U software sales goals through March, from 24 million down to 16 million total.

On the bright side, the Nintendo 3DS continues its recovery from the post-launch doldrums that led to its drastic price cut in 2011. The system has now sold just short of 30 million units worldwide, thanks to the success of titles like New Super Mario Bros. 2 (5.96 million in sales) and Animal Crossing: New Leaf (2.73 million).

As I said in response to an earlier article about Nintendo's continuing failure, the WiiU will be Nintendo's Dreamcast.

Once the next Playstation and Xbox land it'll be like a boot to the skull and the WiiU will soon be on clearance for 1/10th of its current inflated price for circa 2005 level hardware with the games going at Atari post crash prices.

I just wish Nintendo would stop fighting the current and accept that they'd do much better by accepting their role as a software company and started spending the resources they're wasting on hardware on making excellent crossplatform games based on their extremely valuable properties.

It's too similar to the Wii, there are too few games being released, and tables and smartphones make for much stiffer competition.

Have you even SEEN a Wii U in action? The graphics are significantly better, and the controls are a lot tighter. Not to mention the fact that the GamePad has a touchscreen. The Wii Remote didn't have that. Also, the two have distinct physical differences.

Most consoles have a "dull period" between the launch window and the following summer. Most consoles even have a "dull period" every spring, because the developers are waiting for E3. The recent Nintendo Direct broadcast said that there were not 1, but 2 Zelda games in the works (one being a remastered version of Wind Waker), also new Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. playable at E3, plus a new 3D Mario game is in the works. There are plenty of strong games coming up, we just have to wait.

The Wii U isn't going after the tablet and smartphone market. Personally, as someone who has a Wii U, a 3DS, a tablet, and a smartphone, I prefer playing on a console when at home, my 3DS for playing on the go for an extended period, and my smartphone/tablet if I'm say... waiting for a meeting for 5 or 10 minutes, where it wouldn't make sense to pull out a 3DS game due to time constraint. I'm fairly certain I'm not the only person on the planet who has a similar mindset.

This isn't surprising to me, I never expected the Wii U to sell as well as the Wii did. I've intended to buy a Wii U since launch, and I will, just am not in a hurry. As the new franchise games roll out I'll be moved to action.

I can see a price cut in the console's future, but don't expect it until after the pricing of the next Xbox and PlayStation are announced. It just makes more sense than a price drop before E3. That way Nintendo can be all "hey, we've got all these great games coming before the end of the year! AND.... PRICE CUT!!!"

[Most consoles have a "dull period" between the launch window and the following summer. Most consoles even have a "dull period" every spring, because the developers are waiting for E3. The recent Nintendo Direct broadcast said that there were not 1, but 2 Zelda games in the works (one being a remastered version of Wind Waker), also new Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. playable at E3, plus a new 3D Mario game is in the works. There are plenty of strong games coming up, we just have to wait.

Waiting is a hard concept for a society now spoiled on instant returns.

The Shin Megami Tensei/Fire Emblem crossover during Nintendo Direct was also absolutely amazing news to anyone who has ever played any of the games in either series.

Not to mention the ability to play the Virtual Console games on the tablet controller without tying up the television.

There's seriously a lot of good things that could eventually be done with the Wii U if you're creative enough. Just to name one example, I've seen it suggested on another forum that they could make a survival horror game where you're playing as someone being tracked by a stalker, and when you reach the stalker's room later in the game, all of the photos on the walls are all pictures of you that the tablet camera has been secretly taking over the course of the game.

I like what Nintendo does for most of its products. I enjoy seeing what new elements they bring to game play. But now that I've beaten my first two games, I've been waiting to buy a third as I'm waiting for something really good. I think the game lineup completely hindered the Wii U's post-launch early-life. Hopefully we'll get some more awesome come the Wii U's teenage years.

And Dreamcast was actually quite successful. Sega just had to cut their losses because they were in debt. Nintendo has cash on hand.

So far the WiiU has been a dismal failure, and you apparently don't recall the 3DS being such a failure that Nintendo slashed its price less than a year after its release.

Nintendo may have cash to burn through, but that doesn't mean they should be taking that path.

I don't see how a few MILLION sales can constitute as a failure. Especially in a situation where the economy is still shaky at best. Also, the 3DS wasn't a failure, it just wasn't the runaway success they wanted it to be.

As I said in response to an earlier article about Nintendo's continuing failure, the WiiU will be Nintendo's Dreamcast.

Once the next Playstation and Xbox land it'll be like a book to the skull and the WiiU will soon be on clearance for 1/10th of its price with the games going at Atari post crash prices.

I just wish Nintendo would stop fighting the current and accept that they'd do much better by accepting their role as a software company and started spending the resources they're wasting on hardware on making excellent crossplatform games based on their extremely valuable properties.

...what? I'm not saying you're wrong, but... wait, yes I am.

2 gens ago, everyone was claiming "Smaller disc, kiddie color, the market's not big enough to support 3 console makers." The market's been proven to support 3, the "smaller disc" guys had a point that wasn't big enough to kill Nintendo, and the naysayers claimed Nintendo would be software-only by the end of that gen or the next.

Last gen, it was "Crappy graphics, no online, 2 gamecubes duct-taped together." Nevermind that the systems with crappier graphics than the competition somehow sold more than everyone else in previous generations -- Remember the PS2, anyone? -- and despite the crappy online and low-powered systems, Wii is currently the 3rd-best selling console of all time, excluding handhelds. And still the naysayers longed for the day when they could play Mario on the 360.

This gen -- hey, sales aren't doing as well as the Wii, so suddenly Nintendo's going to be software-only soon. And obviously, Wii will have only 1.3% of the graphical horsepower of the competition, and that's what gamers REALLY want. Except that history, even recent history, does not support those claims.

Will the WiiU become the gangbuster record-settingest bestest console ever? No. Will it be the death of Nintendo consoles? No.

And Dreamcast was actually quite successful. Sega just had to cut their losses because they were in debt. Nintendo has cash on hand.

So far the WiiU has been a dismal failure, and you apparently don't recall the 3DS being such a failure that Nintendo slashed its price less than a year after its release.

Nintendo may have cash to burn through, but that doesn't mean they should be taking that path.

Nintendo sold 3.06 million Wii U units worldwide from its November launch through the end of 2012. That's nearly as much as the 3.19 million units of the original Wii Nintendo sold

I think Microsoft and Sony would love to have that kind of dismal failure.

So, years later, with a larger worldwide market they managed to fail to even hit the same numbers for a launch at Christmas and that's not a failure?

Not doing as well as they thought they'd do is failing.

Years later in a down economy, with plentiful supply of the competition, and more informed consumers that can see the game release schedules PLUS the general trend towards using other devices for gaming.

I just wish Nintendo would stop fighting the current and accept that they'd do much better by accepting their role as a software company and started spending the resources they're wasting on hardware on making excellent crossplatform games based on their extremely valuable properties.

In other words the company currently selling the most game consoles in the world should stop selling game consoles?

Years later in a down economy, with plentiful supply of the competition, and more informed consumers that can see the game release schedules PLUS the general trend towards using other devices for gaming.[/quote]

I'm still really not sure where all the dislike for the WiiU is coming from. It really is an pretty big improvement from it's last system in both graphics and connectivity. The ability to play a game on the actual tablet controller was a stroke of genius and it's a feature I use a lot so that I can either play or watch something while the hubby does something else.

Now, granted, it's still going to be at least 2 generations behind the curve compared to the Sony and Microsoft platforms but at least they are changing. They could have just as easily forgone some features to cut the cost or just make it a HD version of the Wii but the fact that they did'nt shows at least SOMEONE at Nintendo is listening. I just wish they'd catch up to the other two so this wankfest over "<insert Playstation/Xbox> next gen will blow WiiU out of the water". Nintendo's never really marches to their own drum and have let their customers find them rather than the other way around.

And Dreamcast was actually quite successful. Sega just had to cut their losses because they were in debt. Nintendo has cash on hand.

So far the WiiU has been a dismal failure, and you apparently don't recall the 3DS being such a failure that Nintendo slashed its price less than a year after its release.

Nintendo may have cash to burn through, but that doesn't mean they should be taking that path.

Nintendo sold 3.06 million Wii U units worldwide from its November launch through the end of 2012. That's nearly as much as the 3.19 million units of the original Wii Nintendo sold

I think Microsoft and Sony would love to have that kind of dismal failure.

So, years later, with a larger worldwide market they managed to fail to even hit the same numbers for a launch at Christmas and that's not a failure?

Not doing as well as they thought they'd do is failing.

Years later, with a larger worldwide market, IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY THAT'S LIMPING TOWARDS JUST STARTING TO SHOW SIGNS OF RECOVERY, it's about 130,000 short of the record-setting launch of the most affordable console (at launch) in recent history, launched in a STRONG ECONOMY. I'd say the fact that they came within 500,000 of the Wii is good enough to call it a success, considering the higher price point of the Wii U and the fact that the economy is still struggling.

And Dreamcast was actually quite successful. Sega just had to cut their losses because they were in debt. Nintendo has cash on hand.

So far the WiiU has been a dismal failure, and you apparently don't recall the 3DS being such a failure that Nintendo slashed its price less than a year after its release.

Nintendo may have cash to burn through, but that doesn't mean they should be taking that path.

Nintendo sold 3.06 million Wii U units worldwide from its November launch through the end of 2012. That's nearly as much as the 3.19 million units of the original Wii Nintendo sold

I think Microsoft and Sony would love to have that kind of dismal failure.

Yeah, calling that a dismal failure is pretty comical.

Let's look at history, shall we?

PS3 launch: Sold 1.7 million units in Q3 (launched in November, ended at the end of december), or roughly half what the Wii U sold. In the next quarter, it sold a mere 1.93 million more, bringing the total up to 3.61 million. It took the PS3 three quarters to hit 4.32 million, and four quarters to hit 5.63 million. It took a full year to hit 10 million.

So this "dismal failure" is looking a lot better than the PS3 launch. And they -aren't- losing money on every console.

Xbox 360 launch: Sold 1.5 million units in Q2 (their launch quarter) of 2005, hit 3.2 million by the end of Q3, and 5 million by the end of Q4 (which was June of the next year).

Again, the Wii's "dismal failure" sold twice as many units in the first quarter after launch. Twice! It took two quarters for EITHER of the other systems to catch up with the -launch- quarter of the Wii U.

So the only gaming platform this launch was poor comapred to was the Wii.

I understand many of you live in fanboy land, but seriously, calling this a "failure" is comical. Nintendo probably calls it a failure because they want to always top themselves, but there's a pretty good chance that the next XBox console and next PS3 console will do SIGNIFICANTLY worse than the Wii U at launch.

Years later, with a larger worldwide market, IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY THAT'S LIMPING TOWARDS JUST STARTING TO SHOW SIGNS OF RECOVERY, it's about 130,000 short of the record-setting launch of the most affordable console (at launch) in recent history, launched in a STRONG ECONOMY. I'd say the fact that they came within 500,000 of the Wii is good enough to call it a success, considering the higher price point of the Wii U and the fact that the economy is still struggling.

The thing that's stopping me from buying one is that I never turn on my Wii anymore. I barely turn on my 360 to play games and that's my favorite console. I use the 360 as a media center extender every single day. The PS3 gets turned on to play BluRay movies but not really for games so I'm on some old firmware. All my gaming has been on PC lately so I'm not really able to convince myself that a new console is a good investment.

Didn't Nintendo state they were selling the consoles at or below cost? If so, a price cut seems rather unlikely in the next year until they manage to start making a decent amount of money on each unit.

Years later, with a larger worldwide market, IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY THAT'S LIMPING TOWARDS JUST STARTING TO SHOW SIGNS OF RECOVERY, it's about 130,000 short of the record-setting launch of the most affordable console (at launch) in recent history, launched in a STRONG ECONOMY. I'd say the fact that they came within 500,000 of the Wii is good enough to call it a success, considering the higher price point of the Wii U and the fact that the economy is still struggling.

Which was launching with no other "next gen" console to compete with.

Lack of competitoin is irrelevent, because PS3s and Xbox 360s, which have/are getting the same multiplatform games, are still selling. Plus, the whole "next gen" thing is starting to become irrelevent as a whole. The distinction was relevent in the 90's, when we had the 8- and 16-bit (NES/Genesis), 32-bit (SNES/SEGA CD), 64-bit(N64, PS1, Saturn), 128-bit (Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, Xbox) consoles, and then the "HD" consoles (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii). Some could potentially argue that the Wii U technically belongs in the "HD" generation and is really late to the game, which I would disagree with due to the fact that, like I said, the generational lines are getting blurred as the console makers are seeming to go different directions. I would not be surprised if Kinect gets a major upgrade and becomes more ubiquitous with the next Xbox, Sony has been pushing cross-platform between the PS3 and the Vita, which I expect them to continue to push, and Nintendo has the Wii U with a tablet-esque controller.

What, what? 3 million units in 3 months is a failure? Sony would kill for the Vita to be that kind of a failure.

No one really expected the Wii U to sell as fast as the Wii did. That was lightning in a bottle. Meanwhile Nintendo continues to profit or control losses, while Sony and Microsoft's gaming divisions bleed more red, and Nintendo is the company that is doomed.

Shareholders and financial analysts are going to be the death of gaming.

Didn't Nintendo state they were selling the consoles at or below cost? If so, a price cut seems rather unlikely in the next year until they manage to start making a decent amount of money on each unit.

As 4K and 802.11ac become more prevalent and popular, the cost of HDMI and 802.11n chips will decrease. The same can be said for USB 2.0 as USB 3.0 establishes a larger presence. Give it a year or so and there will be new high-end GPUs and CPUs, which will help drive down the prices of those components. All of these factors can help contribute to Nintendo justifying a price cut. They will just need to sell enough Wii Us to eat up the stock of existing parts when the older component parts go down in price.

In a post above yours, I pointed out that the XBox 360, in a stronger economy, with no other next gen console to compete with, sold half what the Wii U did in the same time span. And half of THOSE were broken.

Quote:

I would not be surprised if Kinect gets a major upgrade and becomes more ubiquitous with the next Xbox, Sony has been pushing cross-platform between the PS3 and the Vita, which I expect them to continue to push, and Nintendo has the Wii U with a tablet-esque controller.

The problem is that the Wii U's tablet controller is the only one of the lot that is an even remotely good idea.

The Kinect suffers from the same problem as the Wii motion controls - it just isn't good enough to do what you want to do with motion controls. You can do some tasks with it fine, but it is a gimmick that is good for a few games, not a general feature.

The Vita connection is better, but suffers from the fact that you need a Vita, which is a very expensive additional investment that, with smart phones, really has little purpose.

The tablet controller of the Wii U is not useful with every game under the sun, but there are far more things you can do with a tablet or dual screens than you can do with motion controls, and unlike the Vita, it doesn't require you to purchase a second platform.

Well, maybe that's because Nintendo is hates indie developers, me personally, since nintendo is usually about casual games I feel like Nintendo COULD be a great Indie Developer Game Console. But $5,000 to even start developing games for Wii?

I sent 1 question to their developer support and spent a few hours going back and fourth with a rep to figure out if a Nintendo 3DS Supported a feature I might possibly want to build a game for but they wouldn't answer the question unless I paid $5,000 and signed an NDA.

Yeah, I was one of those who jumped on the original Wii bandwagon. Yes, the party games were OK with friends for a while, but we got bored of the whole thing pretty quick. I eventually just gave the system to a friend, and I consider my lesson learned.

Ask yourself this: If you took the controller entirely out of the games, and somehow had direct mind control for driving characters - would the game still be fun to play (tactics, etc)? In my mind, that's a requirement for any long term engagement, and something many Wii games lack entirely.

Yeah, I was one of those who jumped on the original Wii bandwagon. Yes, the party games were OK with friends for a while, but we got bored of the whole thing pretty quick. I eventually just gave the system to a friend, and I consider my lesson learned.

Ask yourself this: If you took the controller entirely out of the games, and somehow had direct mind control for driving characters - would the game still be fun to play (tactics, etc)? In my mind, that's a requirement for any long term engagement, and something many Wii games lack entirely.

Ask yourself this: If you remove "wii" from that statement, is it still true?

The answer is yes.

MOST games are crap. This is true of the Wii as much as anything else.

Let's be entirely realistic here: if people were actually behaving rationally, we'd all be PC gamers.

The only reason to purchase a console is console exclusives, and the Wii is the only platform that offered game experiences you just couldn't get on the computer.

I don't regret getting a Wii because I play most games on the PC, and then play the odd good Wii game.

Long term I don't see how they are going to avoid falling into the same trap as the Wii when the hardware is quickly outpaced and no 3rd party devs want to code specfic functionality for the only platform with asymmetrical play. Other consoles may do something similar, but it seems somewhat unlikely that all three would offer the exact same asymmetrical experience. (I think I went cross-eyed thinking/writing about that).

I think it will sell pretty well now, all things considered. In a year? In two years? Will they be forced to release newer gen hardware sooner? Was that their plan all along?

I don't knows. I could be wrong.

I just wonder, if the WiiU had hardware on par with what the other next gen consoles might come out with, how stunning some of the visuals on its games would be.

I do hope them success as I like the idea, I just wince at cost, execution, and projections for the future.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.